Personally identifiable information (PII) generally refers to information that can be used to identify, contact or locate a person as well as identify an individual in context. Such information may include medical, educational, financial, legal, employment records and other personal data. Because personally identifiable information is valuable, organizations are required to protect personally identifiable information of its employees, members or customers to avoid risks and improper use of such data.
Generally, protecting PII may involve various safeguarding techniques, including a combination of encryption, threat protection, data-loss prevention and policy compliance. Organizations may also be required to set rules and protocols regarding access to the data, how the data is received, stored and transmitted, what information can be sent within the organization and what can be passed along to third parties.
While current systems focus on protecting such data, there is currently no way to preserve enough structure so that certain classes of machines or prediction models could use the protected data.
These and other drawbacks exist.